Has your sports team ever lost a game? And did you write about it in a poem?
You didn’t?
Well, Ernest Thayer did in the now-famous poem “Casey at the Bat.” You can read the history of the poem and the poem itself here.
October 2 is National Poetry Day, and recently the theme was “Remembering,” in which amateur and famous poets write to remember a special moment or a meaningful time in their lives.
Read More
“We don’t need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could.”
The topic of the food we eat can be very controversial, and actor James Cromwell’s quote puts us right in the middle of it.
Read More
Do your students waste endless time erasing whole sentences? Do they become discouraged when they look at their rough drafts filled with arrows, illegible notes in the margins, and ugly lines of scratched-out writing?
Let’s save them the pain by teaching them these handy, easy-to-use proofreading marks.
I’ve watched students in my writing classes scratch out whole sentences and rewrite them. They draw lines through words. They burn up their papers and crumble their erasers just to change something.
This is totally unnecessary.
There’s an easier—and quicker—way to proofread that doesn’t require a lot of rewriting, which should be good news to our students.
This is the last in a series of tutorials on grammar. In this one, you and your students will learn how to use these helpful proofreading marks.
If you’re dying to know what the other grammar tutorials are about, click here for one on punctuation in dialog. (Tarzan and Jane help out on that one.) Click here if you yearn to know how to handle commas in compound sentences with coordinating conjunctions.
And click here for the hard-hitting exposé on where to put the comma, period, colon, or semicolon when using quotation marks. Here’s a tutorial on a question I suspect you’ve heard from your students about using question marks and exclamation points with end quotation marks (you know, do they go inside or outside?).
For the tutorial revealing the crazy fact that the word “everyone” is singular, click here. And to finally put to rest your students’ confusion about it’s/its, you’re/your, and others of that ilk, click here.
As with all the other tutorials, you get a super-duper package today: an infographic to teach the proofreading marks, an example of how to use them in a real paragraph, an exercise so students can fix someone else’s mistakes, and the answers.
Read More
Yes, folks, September 25th is Comic Book Day!
“A day for good triumphing over evil, and for saving the damsel in distress, Comic Book Day is all about enjoying a good comic,” according to daysoftheyear.com.
The dialog in comic books has to be spot-on. It has to be clear, concise, exciting, and informative.
Dialog in comic books and in traditional books has three main purposes:
Read More
This week’s grammar tutorial puts to rest some confusing words like “it’s” and “its.”
You can use the infographic below to teach your students about some confusing word usage. After that, there’s an exercise to reinforce the material with your students, and you’ll find the answers below the exercise.
Now, on to the tutorial . . .
Read More
Do you have to write an essay?
Are you stuck for ideas?
Have no fear. Here’s a strange way to get ideas for essays: Use your initials.
Read More
It is hard to believe, but the word “everyone” is singular.
It sounds as though it should include a lot of people; in fact, it should include everyone—and that sounds plural.
But “everyone” is in the list of singular indefinite pronouns, which are listed here: each, every, either, neither, no, one, no one, everyone, someone, anyone, nobody, everybody, somebody, anybody, nothing, everything, something, anything.
I grouped them by their endings: -one, -body, and -thing. You also could list most of them by their beginnings: no-, every-, some-, and any-.
This week’s blog, which is another in a series of grammar tutorials, includes the following:
National Make Your Bed Day is September 11. Why it is on the same day as National Patriot Day, I’ll never know, and if you’d rather do that prompt, here it is.
Being able to explain how to do something is an important skill. Have you ever explained to an adult how to do something on their computer or smart phone? Or taught a younger kid how to tie shoes or ride a bike?
Read More
“Saying you are a patriot does not make you one; wearing a flag pin does not in itself mean anything at all.” -Viggo Mortensen
“Patriotism is easy to understand in America. It means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.” -Calvin Coolidge
“True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.” -Clarence Darrow
Why all the quotes about patriots and patriotism?
Read More
Welcome to yet another of biting, incisive grammar question like this one: “Mom, is this sentence supposed to have one question mark or two at the end?”
If you’re dying to know what the other grammar tutorials are about, click here for one on punctuation in dialog. (Tarzan and Jane help out on that one.)
I’m fully aware that the heading “End Punctuation” could be the heart’s cry of your struggling students.
However, this week, your students will wrestle with the thorny problem of what to do if a sentence is a question (interrogative) but there’s already a question mark to the left of the end quotation mark.
Take a look at the infographic, which is the lesson.
Read More
Download free samples of our courses